We (5)

More an experiment into the limits of pop than a band, WE are four bodies barely obscured by identical black boxes, a broken man machine of shrill synth grooves, bizarre guitar melodies, cartoon drumrolls and sax for special occasions. Borrowing strategies from the likes of the Residents, Devo and Laibach, WE replace the individual 'I' with the collective ‘WE’, transforming tender love songs into threatening revenge messages and military march tunes: “WE Want to Hold Your Hand”, “WE Will Always Love You” and “WE Will Be Your Father Figure”. WE translate the monstrous, violent, and traumatic, revolutionary process of the abolition of identity into pluralized pop. Songs about 'me' and 'you' become songs about 'us', intimacy becomes a form of collective action and the unique universal. WE present field recordings from the disaster zone of the culture industry. Fragments of 1980s club classics are sieved through the colander of 1970s power pop and pasted together into sticky B-movie surf tunes, not sold as chic upcycled classics but left to rot like a pile of discounted CDs in an abandoned Tesco. Formed in 2010, WE released their debut 10” in 2011 and a cassette in 2014. They continue unabated.